How to Humanize Your Bot

Why would you put the option to talk to a human in your bot?

You have no idea who is landing on the bot. How comfy are they with technology? How much do they already know about you, your products, and your services? How hard would you have to work in order to cover all these scenarios?

Answer: You'd have to work really, really hard, Grasshopper. And adding a feature to talk to a human is just the ticket to creating a good experience for everyone.

Psst! Want to ask me about bots? Click this link, get on my calendar, and let's get the conversation started!

Livestream

Transcript:

Welcome to The Bot Signal. Your home for news and views about Messenger Chatbots. Today, let's talk about something simple that you can add to your chat bot that will humanize your bot. I'm talking about the talk to human button added on the ever present menu. Now, why add a talk to human button? You know you've written this perfect magic sequence that's going to drive a ton of people toward your circle. You've worked really, really hard on it and I know, hey, you know what? I did that too. When I first started out, I totally wrote the sequence that I thought would be incredibly appealing to everybody. Uh, I, I worked really hard on it. I worked for a couple weeks on that darn thing. And uh, and yeah, I mean it was great, but offering people just a little shortcut to be able to talk to you is a really grand thing. And- let's talk about why.

01:10: Here's one of the reasons adding a talk to human button is so important. You have no idea how much people already know about you. When I wrote my first sequence, it was all about telling people a little bit about myself. It was all about telling people a little bit about bots, people who didn't know already. It was very. It's a very one on one experience. My first bot. Here's the thing, sometimes people are connecting to your bot and they know all that stuff already. You don't want to be telling people information that they already know because it feels like a waste of time for them. Some people just want to subscribe to your live streams and get a little reminder 15 minutes before. Some people just want a place to connect with you, that is not a public place where they can maybe ask a question.

02:09: People are looking for wildly different things when they come to your bot. People have wildly different education levels. They know, some of them know a lot about what you're doing. Some of them know very little and it's really, really impossible to cover all of those situations in a sequence. It just is. Let's admit it, the add of the- add a human. No, that's not a button you should put in your bot. The talk to human button covers all of these circumstances. It gives people a chance to ask you a question. It gives people a chance to, you know, just get a hold of someone. It's sort of like when you're, oh, well I hate this analogy, but it's when you're in one of those endless phone queues where you type one to talk to whatever, whatever, and talk to, to, you know, type two to talk to a space rocket or whatever. You know that if you just hit zero, that most of the time you'll be connected to a live human being. This is exactly what we're, what's going on here. We want someone to be able to talk to a live human being, so that is a great reason to put a talk to human button in your chat bot. Now let's talk about another one.

03:38: Second reason to put a talk to human button in your chat bot because you want to make an experience people will love by giving them choices. Listen, giving your chat bot users the VIP experience is a really important thing to do. You want to give them choices so that the users of your bot feel like they have some control over their experience. That's the thing that makes this not feel like marketing anymore. That's the thing that gives people respect and space. Giving them some choices on what to do. When I first wrote that chat bot the very first one, it was an experience where you went through my seven day free mini course whether you wanted to or not, darlings, uh, but I have since learned so much more about creating a great user experience by giving people a chance to do what they want to do in the bot by basically building them a playground and then allowing people to choose where they want to go. What ride did they want to ride today? The VIP experience is so important because every person that enters your chat bot is a potential relationship for you. It's a potential connection for you and connections aren't just sales. Connections are people that you want to refer to other people. Connections are people that you might want to collaborate with on a project, making both of your businesses stronger. Business isn't just about sales and it's time to make our chat bots not just about sales, either.

05:26: Final reason to put a talk to human i, a talk to human button on the menu of your chat bot. Here's something that I heard on the Erin Strayer show the other day. She had a guest on their social media influencer, Kylie Francis and she said something that just sparked a lot of things in my mind and it was this: "me, me, me, doesn't work in social media." And let me, let me put an addendum on there for you. It sure doesn't work in a bot Me. Me, me, me doesn't work in a bot. Listen, if you had somebody that approached you in every single time they approached you, they said, guess what I'm doing now? Guess what I'm doing now? Uh, and it wasn't a seven year old niece or nephew. You would probably not listen to that person anymore. And it is exactly what happens in a bot.

06:19: People get turned off by me, me, me not saying you shouldn't make announcements, telling people what it is that you're doing and what you got new going on, but you need to mix that with options for your audience to talk to you and so that talk to human button is awesome. Mine in my body, it's called, Summon Rj. You don't have to name it, talk to human, but it has a myriad of uses and the one thing that it gives you is an ever present reminder, it gives your audience and ever present reminder that you'd like to talk to them, that they're important, that they're considered, that they're cared about and seen. That's all people want to feel nowadays. Create that experience in a bot and they're your Bot will work wonders.

07:10: Thanks for listening, today. You can find full episodes of The Bot Signal on your favorite podcast player, and if you have the anchor app stop in, ask me a question, leave me a voice message and I'll include it on my next show. If you're completely new to bots and you don't know what's going on there, visit me at checkoutmybot.com. Start a conversation with me. Take my free mini course. It's all available. Thanks a lot and I'll see you in a bot.

07:52: Podcasts you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app completely free from anchor.fm/podcast, that's anchor.fm/podcast.